Book #33 - The Host by Stephanie Meyer

I'm probably like every other Twilight fan in American who read The Host in hopes that it would be similar to the beloved Edward/Bella saga. Although it was nothing like Twilight, I still enjoyed this novel by Stephanie Meyer.

The Host is a novel about aliens taking over civilization, or more specifically, taking over all the human bodies on the planet. Melanie, the main character, is one of the last surviving humans; at the beginning of the novel she's captured and an alien soul is implanted into her body. However, she is what's called a resistant host, and her human mind/soul is not completed erased when Wanderer (the alien soul) takes control. For the first part of the novel, we follow the internal struggle between Melanie and Wanderer; she can't understand why this host is so troublesome, when every other one she's inhabited has never caused such headaches.

While trying to solve her problems with her resistant host, Wanderer is persuaded by Melanie to leave alien civilization to search for a hideout in the dessert that her Uncle Jeb told her about at a child, and what could now be the home to her soul mate Jared and her younger brother Jamie. Once the pair finds the hideout, we follow Wanderer's struggle to be accepted by the remaining humans and to try and coexist with them without getting killed.

The writing of The Host was not much better than the Twilight series. It was still very lengthy with a lot of superfluous information. The book could have been 200 pages shorter and still told the same story. Shoddy writing considered, Meyer did write an entertaining novel. I'm glad I didn't give up on this book after the first 100 pages (because trust me, I thought about it). The plot caused me to think about what life would be like if everyone I loved were gone, but it appeared as if they were still here. The daily emotional torment that Melanie and the remaining humans endured seemed to be too much at times -- hoping that they would be reunited by some stroke of luck or fate.

But like all good pieces of entertainment, I was happy to know that when I put down the book, there would be no aliens and I could go back to my life as it was, after that mini-escape into science fiction.